The bill to legalize marijuana in Canada has passed 3rd Reading in the House and now moves to the Senate for final reading. On this basis, the bill will become law within the next 30-60 days. Legalization is set for July 1st, 2018. The Province of Quebec has twice asked for the implementation date to be postponed for a year and this request has been refused by PM Justin Trudeau who is of the mind that any failure or delay to deliver on this key campaign promise would be electoral suicide for the Liberal Party.

The bill gives each Province the right to regulate how/where legal pot can be sold. Under the proposed law, 30 grams is the maximum one can possess legally (or six plants if you want to grow your own).

One province (Nova Scotia) has chosen to give their own province-owned liquor store monopoly the right to retail pot in Nova Scotia. Ontario (largest province) has formally rejected that model and has opted to allow private retailers to apply for a license - Shoppers Drug Mart, the largest retail drug store in the country, has applied for one. However, in Ontario at least, it is expected that the established 'medical marijuana' clinics that are very popular and have been around for many years will likely be the largest retailers.

The devil is in the details and the details are all about the provinces trying to create government controlled retail monopoly.

It really pains one to point out that government controlled monopolies are what create black markets. In other words, legalization is happening, but the black market will still dominate the trade for a long time to come - that's apparently government policy, whether they admit it or not, that will be the result of their policy.

Government is pissing off the pot market and most of the corporate types pretty much non-stop all year with one idiot announcement after another. They have no clue what they are doing and just stumbling along. This is not a well planned or well thought out policy. It really seems like complete amateurs without a clue are running this policy.

Anyway, as long as they legalize it, that's all that matters. Once they do that, the private market will basically destroy the government monopolies. I've seen pot quality rising and prices dropping non-stop for the last year. Right now, the government medical marijuana clinics are already over-priced - private market is killing them.

For anyone interested, marijuana is now fully legal in Canada, coast to coast.

The one downside is that the provincial governments all seem set on trying to run a retail monopoly in each province which is a dumb idea. One of the major reasons for legalizing pot in the first place is to get rid of the illegal/criminal black market. The problem is that government run monopolies create black markets, so this will NOT eliminate the presently existing black market for pot.

Generally speaking, the product on sale here through the government authorized retailers is not as good and higher priced than the existing black market pot (Canada has a history of producing some of the highest quality pot on the planet), so the black market producers/sellers are likely to stay around.

The one upside of this is that the corporate world seems to have bought into the whole retail marijuana market and they desperately want to get in on the game - and they are massively opposed to any government retail monopoly. With the corporate types playing the lobbying game, I expect some positive changes in this respect over the next few years since corporate lobbying usually gets what they want from governments.